Banana Yoshimoto, née Yoshimoto Mahoko, was born on July 24, 1964 in Tokyo. She is the author of numerous best-selling books, and the daughter of Yoshimoto Takaaki, an influential Japanese philosopher. But if you were Japanese or living in Japan, you already would have known this.
“Bananamania,” as the press likes to call it, first swept Japan in 1988 when Yoshimoto’s debut novella, Kitchen, first came into print. Since then Yoshimoto has written nearly a dozen books, and Kitchen--a quirky story about a transsexual mother, her offbeat son, and a young girl who loves kitchens--has gone into more than 60 printings. While online shrines are routinely constructed for Yoshimoto in Japan, she remains somewhat of a mystery overseas, which is why this interviewer feels compelled to exhaustively describe Yoshimoto and her work before delving into the actual interview.
Perhaps what’s most striking about Yoshimoto’s work is her close proximity to the reader. She writes curious and inviting stories, the kind that make you pause and wonder about the author. “Does she brush her teeth before or after breakfast? Does she even eat breakfast?”
Yoshimoto’s characters deal with youthful troubles and urban existentialism--two themes that have been beaten many times but never seem to die. Yet unlike Bret Easton Ellis, and all the other urban writers with their detached, bird’s-eye perspectives, Yoshimoto writes gritty stories with warmth and dogged innocence.
In spite of the fact that her father’s work was the bible for Japan’s radical youth movement in the '60s, and that she routinely rubs elbows with the likes of Pedro Almodovar and the Dalai Lama, Yoshimoto’s prose is wholly devoid of the privilege and pretense that sometimes surrounds her. She takes pleasure in the small things--be it the crack of a floorboard or the smell of kimchee.
Given the humane nature of Yoshimoto’s work and the fact that she renamed herself Banana, it is not surprising that food is a recurring theme in many of her stories. Were it not for this nation’s shockingly small appetite for foreign books, Americans, too, would succumb to Bananamania. I wish I could say that I sat down with Yoshimoto and discussed love, loss and human frailty over shabu-shabu and sashimi, but in truth, this interview was conducted via e-mail with the help of a Japanese translator. As a result, it reads less like a casual conversation and more like a nosy inquiry. Enjoy.
(visualizza meno contenuto)Banana Yoshimoto, née Yoshimoto Mahoko, was born on July 24, 1964 in Tokyo. She is the author of numerous best-selling books, and the daughter of Yoshimoto Takaaki, an influential Japanese philosopher. But if you were Japanese or living in Japan, you already would have known this.
“Bananamania,” as the press likes to call it, first swept Japan in 1988 when Yoshimoto’s debut novella, Kitchen, first came into print. Since then Yoshimoto has written nearly a dozen books, and Kitchen--a quirky...
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